


[Fandom stats] Popular anime & cartoons on AO3

by toastystats (destinationtoast)



Series: Fandom Stats [85]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-09-20 02:38:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17014005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/toastystats
Summary: In response to a prompt in Oct 2017: "your stats wind up largely skewing towards liveaction fandom (all largest fandoms tend to be, so it makes sense)-- would you ever be up to stat some data on current cartoon fandoms?"





	[Fandom stats] Popular anime & cartoons on AO3

**Author's Note:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/166551091439/your-stats-wind-up-largely-skewing-towards).

@2n2n asked:

> your stats wind up largely skewing towards liveaction fandom (all largest fandoms tend to be, so it makes sense)-- would you ever be up to stat some data on current cartoon fandoms? Who is the current bigdog between currently-airing shows (rick & morty? steven universe? adventure time? camp camp?! OK KO?! etc!!), and how might their focus differ from liveaction fandom behavior?

Hey – sorry I’m behind on answering stuff in my inbox!  The good news is that today I had a bit of time to do some stats for you over breakfast. :D

AO3 makes it a bit tough to sort fandoms by size, or find the biggest fandoms by genre.  But I’ve written a script in the past to do that for each of their subcategories (e.g., “TV Shows”).  So I just grabbed some piping fresh data off of the “Cartoons & Comics & Graphic Novels” AO3 page, and then removed anything that was obviously a comic.  **There may still be comics in there, and I didn’t take the time to remove duplicates/highly overlapping fandoms (and this also relies on AO3′s decisions about how to categorize fandoms, which you may disagree with),** but this should give us a quick first look.  

[](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNfIAP2nBhjNxva3s1oYWyv_nDghuCmNa8INN4wE96IKzjWYKtksd627_5d-6cisA/photo/AF1QipOWG7YAdYwDk59nbqGrcj8DsWGMVbrPbL6Gd9z3?key=UzBPVlZCQ3p1S1VnWHVkM2tDR3lQNGs2VmRBM3BR)

Voltron currently has A LOT more works than the next most popular show, but it’s also a long-running fandom. ( **Edit:** but Legendary Defender is new. Thanks, eagle-eyed readers!)   One of the ones you asked about – Steven Universe – is still relatively new, but has produced 8.6K works already!

Here are all the ones with at least 500 works – I highlighted the particular ones you mentioned, although I know you were just listing some of the examples you were interested in:

[](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNfIAP2nBhjNxva3s1oYWyv_nDghuCmNa8INN4wE96IKzjWYKtksd627_5d-6cisA/photo/AF1QipPX2G5BrC6WXcqg2-F194HUYXRdbwpiay5oIWg_?key=UzBPVlZCQ3p1S1VnWHVkM2tDR3lQNGs2VmRBM3BR)

[](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNfIAP2nBhjNxva3s1oYWyv_nDghuCmNa8INN4wE96IKzjWYKtksd627_5d-6cisA/photo/AF1QipNxbXCzwHhRwTsfVIQjfqX9rnjCRib6njROKFsN?key=UzBPVlZCQ3p1S1VnWHVkM2tDR3lQNGs2VmRBM3BR)

… and OK K.O.! has 84 works. 

 **Edit:** people have pointed out that this didn’t include a whole bunch of animated stuff that’s categorized on AO3 as Anime & Manga. (Also Homestuck, which is categorized with cartoons etc, but I initially omitted because I’m confused about whether it fits the bill. XD ) Adding all these fandoms in (note: still pulling data quickly and without careful curation), we get the following top 20:

[](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNfIAP2nBhjNxva3s1oYWyv_nDghuCmNa8INN4wE96IKzjWYKtksd627_5d-6cisA/photo/AF1QipOUe_nRWGKcv1semMTU7DxOawxArgHsHzTrK-4k?key=UzBPVlZCQ3p1S1VnWHVkM2tDR3lQNGs2VmRBM3BR)

I don’t have time right now to dive more deeply into the characteristics of these fandoms vs. live action fandoms – but if you or anyone else want to take this list and dive in deeper, the raw data is [here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13CpUDCP12tPYQ1JhE9nwJo4n95WvyKdbCvFeTmsW5WU/edit#gid=1337881662), and I’m happy to share my scripts or other info/ideas about data gathering with you. :)  


And for reference, here are some notes on [interpreting my fandom stats](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/166518286054/some-notes-on-my-fandom-stats) (I’m probably going to start appending this to all such posts).

**Author's Note:**

> Comments welcome, but I’m in the middle of a massive fandom stats backup due to Tumblr purge, so I may be slow to respond.


End file.
